Her solution is distasteful, but her statement of the problem is accurate: Europe has a tremendous problem with xenophobia, one that's only become worse in recent years with increasing immigration from former colonies (many of which happen to be primarily Muslim). Because Europeans are generally used to thinking of their nations as being united by a common culture and (to a somewhat lesser degree) ethnicity, they tend to see those immigrants as outsiders and a social, economic, and religious threat. The 9/11 terror attacks, and the train bombings in London and Madrid, helped to justify that viewpoint to its adherents. If anything positive is to come of this, perhaps it will be to again remind Europe that homegrown radicals are every bit as capable of unspeakable atrocities as foreign radicals are.
I get migraines, but I'm lucky in that they're very occasional and very mild. I would have a hard time telling them from a regular bad headache but for the fact that I get textbook visual auras about an hour before they hit. So, when crazy glowing stairsteps start oozing across my field of vision, I just take a few Advil with a 20oz Coke chaser and lie down with the blinds closed for a few hours.
You're doing the wrong comparison. The relevant comparison is not "with a college degree, now (in a bum economy)" vs. "without a college degree, then (in a good economy)", but "with a college degree, now (in a bum economy)" vs. "without a college degree, now (in a bum economy)".
I know, but I figure that since the whole reason this debate is happening int he first place is because the economy sucks, and everybody wants to point fingers, it's a valid point for comparison:)
So look at the glass not as three quarters empty, but as a quarter full.
That's the way I try to look at, at least. *Nobody* is hiring in my field, because when you provide design services for expensive, bespoke structures meant to last for 20-100 years, your product is the first thing people forgo when the budget is tight and their needs aren't growing. Depending on who you talk to, something like 80% of new and recent grads in my field can't find work, since we had the ill fortune of going into school when it was booming with the rest of the bubble and exiting in the middle of its deepest low in the last 50 years. Just having a relevant job at all makes me one of the lucky ones. A friend of mine who just graduated from the same school is working as a barista and signing up for the National Guard, and most of the rest are all going back for grad school rather than face the job market. I'm hoping the work experience will put me at the head of the line once hiring starts again, but in the meantime I'm living with my parents and hoping better times are on the way.
Five years, but that's how long the program was. That's also five years that I wasn't working, except for early on when there were still summer internships to be had. By the end of my third year those were drying up pretty quickly.
Here's my anecdote/data point: I graduated last August from with a professional degree from a respected state university. Immediately thereafter, I was unemployed for six moths, and as of right now, I'm doing contract work and earning less take-home pay (after you figure in self-employment taxes) than I did the summer after I graduated from high school. So for me, figuring expenses, lost wages, etc., college works out be worth about -$200,000.
To add another data open-world datapoint, I've got 90 hours in Just Cause 2 and 60 in New Vegas. As for Oblivion, well, I think since 2006 I've done a complete playthrough about once per year. One of these days I may even finish the Fighter's Guild quests and play through Shivering Isles!
See, the diefference is that in both of those situations you're aware of the limits of your car, and have some idea of the effects of the electronic systems involved. It's the general attitude of "stability control makes me invincible in spite of myself" that's dangerous.
For my part, it's a rare thing that I ever drive something that even has anti-lock brakes, so I make a point of being acutely aware of where the limits of adhesion are, and knowing how my car behaves when it's near to them. I know that safe control of my car is entirely in my hands, and take that a serious responsibility.
Correlation does not imply causation, but it it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively. The Toyota unintended acceleration problem has all the hallmarks of a self-perpetuating media feeding frenzy, and none of the empirical evidence that's come to light suggests that, beyond a few mismatched floor mats or a very rare mechanical defect in the gas pedal, the real problem is that most of the American driving public would rather have a convenient scapegoat rather than own up to the fact that they can barely distinguish the gas from the brake.
Anyway, that's what stability and traction control systems are for, right?
No, no, a thousand times no. Traction control and stability control are intended, basically, to modify control input when the driver does something that puts the vehicle outside the envelope of safe control. If you're going to drive as though the TCS/ESC systems magically make it safe to drive that way, you're essentially saying "I'm incapable of controlling my vehicle, but that's OK because these computers will save me from myself!" The end result is like what was observed when anti-lock brakes first came on the scene -- at best, no net gain in safety. If you're going to trust a electronic system to protect you from your own mistakes, it's only a matter of time before you find yourself in a situation that exceeds the capabilities of that system.
The summary is reasonably accurate: the NHTSA noted that while those are known problems, the "vast majority" of reports were most probably caused by driver error. NASA even noted that the frequency of reports was most directly correlated to the amount of media attention the issue had received, and not at all with design changes.
In short, this was the Audi 5000 all over again, and people need to learn how to drive instead of blaming their mistakes on their cars.
The files discovered in the Android code repository are unequivocally Oracle's IP, with an inappropriately modified license. This means, that for these at least, Google is almost certainly liable for infringement. However, since none of those files ever went into an Android handset, their presence, in a legal sense, is most likely completely irrelevant with regards to Oracle's main aim, which is to extract court-mandated royalties from Google and/or handset manufacturers for each Android device they produce. It would be like the RIAA trying to collect royalties on music that I wrote and produced on my own, because they found pirated music on one of my computers.
Does that sound about right, or am I way off-base here?
I'm no scientist, but to my untrained nose dark matter has the same smell as "luminiferous aether" and "epicycles." Basically, it's a theoretical placeholder for something we don't fully grasp yet.
See, here's the thing: I drive a 20-year-old car that has... uhm, power brakes? Not ABS, just vacuum assist. As far as driver aids go, that's everything. But right up to the point where somebody in a Suburbalade drives over top of me without noticing, I would argue that in the hands of an attentive driver, it's a safer car than 9/10ths of what current for sale:
Radar assisted cruise control
I have a foot. If I'm getting too close the car in front of me, it goes up. If I'm going too slow, it goes down. No messing with switches or reliance on electronic sensors needed.
Blind spot systems... Backup cameras
The superstructure of my car has the stiffness of undercooked spaghetti in comparison to most new cars. On the flip side, however, I can see damn near everything, because the A, B, and C pillars aren't thick enough to block much of the road, and the window in the rear hatch goes down to about two feet off the ground. In addition, I can adjust my mirrors so that just as cars leave the center mirror, they enter one of the wing mirrors, and just as they leave the wing mirrors, they enter my peripheral vision. Presto! Total situational awareness.
Traction control... Stability control
I know how to drive my car at the limit, and it's four feet tall so it's not about to roll over.
Antilock brakes
I listen for skidding, and then back off until it stops. It's surprisingly effective, you just have to de-train yourself that pushing harder equals stopping faster.
In addition, because the car is tiny and weighs next-to-nothing, it changes direction quite handily, enabling me to avoid trouble with ease compared to Mr. Suburbalade Owner, whose electronic gizmos are nice, but unable to change the physics of a top-heavy three-ton projectile. The trick here is that for this all to work well, the driver has to be attentive and a good driver. Perhaps not surprisingly, those two things are what most drivers on the road today flat-out refuse to be. Unless a sudden outbreak of common sense overtakes the driving populace, it seems like the trend of taking more and more control away from the driver and giving it to a computer is going to continue, along with the attendant increases in cost, complexity, and motorhead joy-killing. If automation is the goal, though... why don't we just build trains!?
Don't consider the long-term maintenance issues involved with the moving parts
This is already a solved problem. See railroads for more info.
Just because railroads can and have done it doesn't make it a cost-effective solution for houses. There are added maintenance costs involved, and when you start adding moving parts to a structure that's usually expected to last 20-100 years with the occasional re-shingling and coat of paint, you start shortening its effective lifespan.
the problems involved with things like plumbing and electrical service
Also a solved problem: standard connectors, valves, and switches.
Same issues as above. We can do it, and do it regularly with RVs, but most people don't want to live in RVs forever, and when something goes wrong with the blackwater tank, the maintenance gets... icky. There's also increased infrastructure costs when you have to place and maintain weatherproof hookups anywhere that somebody wants to park their house.
Every floor except the first in a multistory structure is raised off the ground. So now you have to insulate one more floor. Big deal.
Every other multistory structure typically has an enclosed and insulated ground floor with a thick foundation beneath it. That is to say, there's usually not direct exposure to the elements on the underside of every upper floor. You also lose the opportunity to take advantage of the ground's thermal mass. There's a reason raised construction is much more common in the South.
For me, the red flag in this scheme is seismic stability. Even if the structural integrity of the building can be assured -- as far as that can be done with any building in an earthquake -- what's the plan for getting a building back on the tracks if it's shaken off or worse, if the tracks are bent or broken?
You also have to anchor the building to keep it from tipping over in the wind, and have a workaround for when a wheel bearing seizes up or a pusher motor doesn't start after sitting for six months. I won't argue that the scheme is technologically possible, but the real issue is that given the initial costs, added long-term maintenance, and human expectations it's not really feasible, at least not within a sane budget. Don't get me wrong, the overall concept is *really* interesting. For my part, I have an unhealthy fascination with taco trucks -- it's a mobile restaurant! -- but at the same I'd prefer not to live in a motorized apartment block. It's not just a question of "can we?" but "should we?"
I wish they wouldn't have. Along with the various IT "architect" positions, it makes sorting out job listings for building architecture incredibly hard.:)
You have no idea how many times I heard this line in studio: "Hey, you think like an engineer...!" followed by a question about basic structural issues or weatherproofing. It's very frustrating how few architects and designers actually know how a building goes together. I'm a far cry from an actual engineer (show me a load-transfer problem and my eyes glaze over and roll up into my head) but I like to have at least a general concept of how the things I draw actually translate into physical objects. That's a shockingly uncommon sentiment amongst my peers.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, GM's ad department's already done the heavy lifting...
Her solution is distasteful, but her statement of the problem is accurate: Europe has a tremendous problem with xenophobia, one that's only become worse in recent years with increasing immigration from former colonies (many of which happen to be primarily Muslim). Because Europeans are generally used to thinking of their nations as being united by a common culture and (to a somewhat lesser degree) ethnicity, they tend to see those immigrants as outsiders and a social, economic, and religious threat. The 9/11 terror attacks, and the train bombings in London and Madrid, helped to justify that viewpoint to its adherents. If anything positive is to come of this, perhaps it will be to again remind Europe that homegrown radicals are every bit as capable of unspeakable atrocities as foreign radicals are.
I get migraines, but I'm lucky in that they're very occasional and very mild. I would have a hard time telling them from a regular bad headache but for the fact that I get textbook visual auras about an hour before they hit. So, when crazy glowing stairsteps start oozing across my field of vision, I just take a few Advil with a 20oz Coke chaser and lie down with the blinds closed for a few hours.
As anybody who's an old hand at EVE probably realized: This stuff is Protein Delicacies!
"Those bastards at Fermilab have discovered the Higgs Boson before we did! It's time to initiate... Plan Z."
"Sir, you't seriously mean to--!"
"Oh, but I do. PREPARE THE ANTIMATTER BOMB!"
[Disclaimer for the perdantic: I know the 150GeV bump is probably not the Higgs boson.]
You're doing the wrong comparison. The relevant comparison is not "with a college degree, now (in a bum economy)" vs. "without a college degree, then (in a good economy)", but "with a college degree, now (in a bum economy)" vs. "without a college degree, now (in a bum economy)".
I know, but I figure that since the whole reason this debate is happening int he first place is because the economy sucks, and everybody wants to point fingers, it's a valid point for comparison :)
So look at the glass not as three quarters empty, but as a quarter full.
That's the way I try to look at, at least. *Nobody* is hiring in my field, because when you provide design services for expensive, bespoke structures meant to last for 20-100 years, your product is the first thing people forgo when the budget is tight and their needs aren't growing. Depending on who you talk to, something like 80% of new and recent grads in my field can't find work, since we had the ill fortune of going into school when it was booming with the rest of the bubble and exiting in the middle of its deepest low in the last 50 years. Just having a relevant job at all makes me one of the lucky ones. A friend of mine who just graduated from the same school is working as a barista and signing up for the National Guard, and most of the rest are all going back for grad school rather than face the job market. I'm hoping the work experience will put me at the head of the line once hiring starts again, but in the meantime I'm living with my parents and hoping better times are on the way.
Five years, but that's how long the program was. That's also five years that I wasn't working, except for early on when there were still summer internships to be had. By the end of my third year those were drying up pretty quickly.
Here's my anecdote/data point: I graduated last August from with a professional degree from a respected state university. Immediately thereafter, I was unemployed for six moths, and as of right now, I'm doing contract work and earning less take-home pay (after you figure in self-employment taxes) than I did the summer after I graduated from high school. So for me, figuring expenses, lost wages, etc., college works out be worth about -$200,000.
This economy sucks.
To add another data open-world datapoint, I've got 90 hours in Just Cause 2 and 60 in New Vegas. As for Oblivion, well, I think since 2006 I've done a complete playthrough about once per year. One of these days I may even finish the Fighter's Guild quests and play through Shivering Isles!
Easily mis-parsed sentence is easily mis-parsed!
See, the diefference is that in both of those situations you're aware of the limits of your car, and have some idea of the effects of the electronic systems involved. It's the general attitude of "stability control makes me invincible in spite of myself" that's dangerous.
For my part, it's a rare thing that I ever drive something that even has anti-lock brakes, so I make a point of being acutely aware of where the limits of adhesion are, and knowing how my car behaves when it's near to them. I know that safe control of my car is entirely in my hands, and take that a serious responsibility.
Correlation does not imply causation, but it it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively. The Toyota unintended acceleration problem has all the hallmarks of a self-perpetuating media feeding frenzy, and none of the empirical evidence that's come to light suggests that, beyond a few mismatched floor mats or a very rare mechanical defect in the gas pedal, the real problem is that most of the American driving public would rather have a convenient scapegoat rather than own up to the fact that they can barely distinguish the gas from the brake.
Anyway, that's what stability and traction control systems are for, right?
No, no, a thousand times no. Traction control and stability control are intended, basically, to modify control input when the driver does something that puts the vehicle outside the envelope of safe control. If you're going to drive as though the TCS/ESC systems magically make it safe to drive that way, you're essentially saying "I'm incapable of controlling my vehicle, but that's OK because these computers will save me from myself!" The end result is like what was observed when anti-lock brakes first came on the scene -- at best, no net gain in safety. If you're going to trust a electronic system to protect you from your own mistakes, it's only a matter of time before you find yourself in a situation that exceeds the capabilities of that system.
The summary is reasonably accurate: the NHTSA noted that while those are known problems, the "vast majority" of reports were most probably caused by driver error. NASA even noted that the frequency of reports was most directly correlated to the amount of media attention the issue had received, and not at all with design changes.
In short, this was the Audi 5000 all over again, and people need to learn how to drive instead of blaming their mistakes on their cars.
So... what's the Dominion's policy towards inter-universal immigration?
It's beyond we mere mortals to stop this trend. Only Science can save us now. Praise be to Science! (Incoming *whoosh* in 3... 2...)
War is Peace! Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength!
The files discovered in the Android code repository are unequivocally Oracle's IP, with an inappropriately modified license. This means, that for these at least, Google is almost certainly liable for infringement. However, since none of those files ever went into an Android handset, their presence, in a legal sense, is most likely completely irrelevant with regards to Oracle's main aim, which is to extract court-mandated royalties from Google and/or handset manufacturers for each Android device they produce. It would be like the RIAA trying to collect royalties on music that I wrote and produced on my own, because they found pirated music on one of my computers.
Does that sound about right, or am I way off-base here?
I'm no scientist, but to my untrained nose dark matter has the same smell as "luminiferous aether" and "epicycles." Basically, it's a theoretical placeholder for something we don't fully grasp yet.
"Cutting taxes" sounds fine, until you have to face the fact that you will no longer enjoy those things that those taxes provided.
Like that $578-million-dollar school they opened in August in LA?
I mean Christ Almighty, Elon Musk has a damned private space program for less money than that.
It's not wrong, it's just what the RIAA thinks it's owed when someone pirates a CD.
Radar assisted cruise control
I have a foot. If I'm getting too close the car in front of me, it goes up. If I'm going too slow, it goes down. No messing with switches or reliance on electronic sensors needed.
Blind spot systems... Backup cameras
The superstructure of my car has the stiffness of undercooked spaghetti in comparison to most new cars. On the flip side, however, I can see damn near everything, because the A, B, and C pillars aren't thick enough to block much of the road, and the window in the rear hatch goes down to about two feet off the ground. In addition, I can adjust my mirrors so that just as cars leave the center mirror, they enter one of the wing mirrors, and just as they leave the wing mirrors, they enter my peripheral vision. Presto! Total situational awareness.
Traction control... Stability control
I know how to drive my car at the limit, and it's four feet tall so it's not about to roll over.
Antilock brakes
I listen for skidding, and then back off until it stops. It's surprisingly effective, you just have to de-train yourself that pushing harder equals stopping faster.
In addition, because the car is tiny and weighs next-to-nothing, it changes direction quite handily, enabling me to avoid trouble with ease compared to Mr. Suburbalade Owner, whose electronic gizmos are nice, but unable to change the physics of a top-heavy three-ton projectile. The trick here is that for this all to work well, the driver has to be attentive and a good driver. Perhaps not surprisingly, those two things are what most drivers on the road today flat-out refuse to be. Unless a sudden outbreak of common sense overtakes the driving populace, it seems like the trend of taking more and more control away from the driver and giving it to a computer is going to continue, along with the attendant increases in cost, complexity, and motorhead joy-killing. If automation is the goal, though... why don't we just build trains!?
Don't consider the long-term maintenance issues involved with the moving parts
This is already a solved problem. See railroads for more info.
Just because railroads can and have done it doesn't make it a cost-effective solution for houses. There are added maintenance costs involved, and when you start adding moving parts to a structure that's usually expected to last 20-100 years with the occasional re-shingling and coat of paint, you start shortening its effective lifespan.
the problems involved with things like plumbing and electrical service
Also a solved problem: standard connectors, valves, and switches.
Same issues as above. We can do it, and do it regularly with RVs, but most people don't want to live in RVs forever, and when something goes wrong with the blackwater tank, the maintenance gets... icky. There's also increased infrastructure costs when you have to place and maintain weatherproof hookups anywhere that somebody wants to park their house.
Every floor except the first in a multistory structure is raised off the ground. So now you have to insulate one more floor. Big deal.
Every other multistory structure typically has an enclosed and insulated ground floor with a thick foundation beneath it. That is to say, there's usually not direct exposure to the elements on the underside of every upper floor. You also lose the opportunity to take advantage of the ground's thermal mass. There's a reason raised construction is much more common in the South.
For me, the red flag in this scheme is seismic stability. Even if the structural integrity of the building can be assured -- as far as that can be done with any building in an earthquake -- what's the plan for getting a building back on the tracks if it's shaken off or worse, if the tracks are bent or broken?
You also have to anchor the building to keep it from tipping over in the wind, and have a workaround for when a wheel bearing seizes up or a pusher motor doesn't start after sitting for six months. I won't argue that the scheme is technologically possible, but the real issue is that given the initial costs, added long-term maintenance, and human expectations it's not really feasible, at least not within a sane budget. Don't get me wrong, the overall concept is *really* interesting. For my part, I have an unhealthy fascination with taco trucks -- it's a mobile restaurant! -- but at the same I'd prefer not to live in a motorized apartment block. It's not just a question of "can we?" but "should we?"
I wish they wouldn't have. Along with the various IT "architect" positions, it makes sorting out job listings for building architecture incredibly hard. :)
You have no idea how many times I heard this line in studio: "Hey, you think like an engineer...!" followed by a question about basic structural issues or weatherproofing. It's very frustrating how few architects and designers actually know how a building goes together. I'm a far cry from an actual engineer (show me a load-transfer problem and my eyes glaze over and roll up into my head) but I like to have at least a general concept of how the things I draw actually translate into physical objects. That's a shockingly uncommon sentiment amongst my peers.